Demand for professionals who can stamp out identity theft and fraud

As companies seek to protect themselves from the kinds of breaches that compromised 40 million Target
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customers’ credit card numbers last November, fraud-prevention professionals are in high demand.

The overall U.S. employment picture may still be shaky, despite gains last month, but opportunities seem to abound for fraud investigators who can unearth, investigate and prevent wrongdoing like money laundering, bribery and identity theft.

“The thing that I have been getting a lot of queries about from clients and potential clients is protection of their data from misuse,” said Kathy Lavinder, founder and executive director of the Bethesda, Md.-based recruiting company Security and Investigative Placement Consultants, LLC. “You have to have the technical gurus, the people with technical expertise who can harden the networks and look at the information security from the inside out and the outside in.”

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners topped 70,000 members this year, a 40% increase since 2008, when the financial crisis unraveled. The association credentials individuals who pass its fraud detection and prevention exam. Its members span law enforcement, accounting and medicine, and even include ministers who have taken it upon themselves to prevent stealing at their churches, said James Ratley, its president and CEO.

High-tech fraud wasn’t as much of an issue when the association formed in 1988, but as hackers gained the ability to swipe larger sums, the requirements for a fraud investigator have shifted to include cyber skills.

“It’s made it more difficult for the management or auditors to find red flags or the indicators for fraud,” Ratley said. “It’s made the fraud examiner more powerful. Also, the average fraud perpetrator does not know how to erase their trail on a computer and the [examiner] that specializes in IT can go in and retrace the steps.”

Colleges and universities are training more candidates for the growing fraud-detecting job market. Just two universities offered anti-fraud degrees in 2002, according to an article in the association’s bimonthly Fraud Magazine. The Austin, Texas-based association now counts 429 educational members, from Georgetown University to India’s Christ University in the southern city of Bangalore.

About 30 new schools partner with the association each year to teach a course with its anti-fraud syllabus, which includes books and videos with titles like “Cooking the Books: What Every Accountant Should Know about Fraud.”

“No longer are you really just a cop on the street for the bank. You need to have a little bit of computer wizardry at your fingertips,” said Al Pascual, senior analyst for security, risk and fraud at Javelin Strategy & Research.

Silicon Valley’s social media and web companies are searching for individuals who can weed out job board and online review hoaxes, Pascual said, and large consulting companies are also searching for investigative talent. A global search of Ernst & Young’s careers website yielded 77 openings related to fraud.

The median compensation for an anti-fraud professional with certification is $91,000, according to the association, which charges test-takers a $250 application fee and $745 for a prep course, in addition to $150 in annual membership dues that are discounted for students and members in developing countries.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data do not distinguish the fraud field from industries like criminal investigation or accounting.

Hollywood films such as “Catch Me If You Can,” based on legendary con man Frank Abagnale, and all the various chronicles of the financial crisis have helped romanticize the profession, said John Hanson, who investigated and taught white collar crime at the FBI from 1995 to 2004 before founding the Washington, D.C.-based fraud investigation and compliance firm Artifice Forensic Financial Services, LLC.

“There’s a mystique. I know when I was an FBI agent, people were always like, ‘what do you do?’ It was very enigmatic and mysterious and sexy,” he said. “Let’s face it, audit and tax can be pretty boring. Fraud investigations, I mean that’s fun. You’re putting together a puzzle.”

There are signs investigators are beginning to make some progress amid the growth of high-tech fraud. The IRS initiated 66% more criminal investigations into identity theft cases where fraudsters attempted to file for another individual’s tax refund in the year ended Sept. 30, according to an agency release. Of the nearly 1,500 cases, more than 1,200 were recommended for prosecution and 438 led to sentences.

Fraud investigators are regularly recruited by government agencies like the FBI and IRS. The tax agency is currently scouting for fraud specialists who can sniff out individual and corporate fraud for its small business unit, according to a job posting on its website, which advertises salaries from about $100,000 to $140,000.

Lavinder, the recruiter, said the majority of fraud-hunting jobs she sees are corporate and call for specialization in specific industries such as the finance or pharmaceutical sector, rather than a focus on small-scale consumers.

“I always feel like consumers are getting short shrift, and I say that as someone who’s also a consumer,” she said. “I just feel a lot of consumers are sitting ducks.”

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